About the Client
The Boston Celtics, the most successful NBA franchise with 17 championships – more than any other NBA team – has relied on both its historic legacy and modern technology to achieve sales growth. The Celtics sales team knew how to respect the trust of their fans and successfully prioritized bonding season ticket holders with the team long-term. Nevertheless, measuring and engaging reps with their sales data presented its challenges for the young sales team.
The Challenge
The young, modern Celtics salesforce, like many in the sports industry, needed a better way to engage with their KPIs. Weekly sales reports did not inspire vital team culture, and reporting inaccuracies were high. At the time, former Senior Director of Ticket Sales for the Celtics, Jim Davis, sought a system that would promote an energetic atmosphere while engaging the sales team with their statistics and improving CRM user adoption and data quality.
The Solution
Hurrah! offered the Celtics dynamically updating leaderboards that pull live sales data from their CRM to display on TVs around their office. Real-time achievement recognition, KPI rankings, and the ease of sharing custom media helped transform the atmosphere of the sales department into an energetic and celebratory team environment. Hurrah! provided Celtics management with better visibility of sales metrics, allowing them to study their sales closure process and make improvements. Hurrah! also gave sales data and team updates greater visibility in the company and helped draw the investment and interest of the game operations department, sponsorship and community relations, as well as upper management.
Hurrah! has become the Celtics' channel for all things NBA from last night’s game statistics, to league news, and much more. According to Zachary Soulier, Sr. Account Executive with the Celtics, it is a valuable solution for both reps and management. “The main benefit is just how simple it is to display news and sales reports quickly,” he says. The Celtics Hurrah! Channel is viewed regularly by about 35 people, and content gets updated daily with stats, graphics, game clips, and league news from the previous week or night.
The Results & Looking Forward
The Celtics saw a significant increase in CRM input and improvement in data quality, since reps were able to see their results displayed on their Hurrah! Channel. Nearly 5 years after initial implementation, Hurrah! is an integral part of the Celtics’ sales team culture. They use leaderboards to highlight top reps, tracking suite, season ticket, and group ticket sales; and they use events to celebrate big sales by their team. They have made use of the Tableau integration to display sales reports, and they are especially creative in adding their own custom media to their channels.
Today the Celtics are still seeing great results with Hurrah! “We are definitely seeing a return on our investment.” “The reps really enjoy it. The fact that you can display more than just the sales numbers, that really gets the people going.” remarks Soulier. Hurrah!’s simple to use interface and flexible technology have allowed the Celtics to innovate new ways to get the most out of the platform.
